As a useful component for flat and large TVs, plasma display panels (hereafter, referred to as PDP) have received greater attention. In the PDP, for example, on a glass substrate of front panel to be a display surface, a plural of coupled sustain electrode is formed with a material such as silver, chromium, aluminum or nickel. Furthermore, to cover the sustain electrode, a dielectric layer comprising glass as main component is formed in a thickness of 20 to 50 μm, and to cover the dielectric layer, a MgO layer is formed. On the other hand, on a glass substrate of rear panel, a plurality of address electrodes are formed in stripe-like fashion, and an a dielectric layer comprising glass as main component is formed to cover the address electrodes. On the dielectric layer, barrier ribs arc formed to partition discharge cells, and phosphor layers are formed in discharge spaces formed by the barrier ribs and the dielectric layer. In a PDP capable of displaying in full color, the phosphor layers are constituted with phosphors capable of irradiating respective RGB colors. The front panel and the rear panel are sealed such that the sustain electrodes on the glass substrate of the front panel and the address electrodes on the rear panel orthogonally intersect with each other, to form a PDP by enclosing a rare gas constituted with such as helium, neon or xenon in the gap between those substrates. Since pixels is formed, at intersections of the scan electrodes and the address electrodes as centers, the PDP has a plurality of pixels and it becomes possible to display an image.
For displaying an image in a PDP, when a sparkover voltage or more is charged between the sustain electrode and the address electrode in a selected pixel in a state in which no light is emitted, cations or electrons, generated by ionization, move to the electrode of the opposite polarity in the discharge space since the pixel acts as a capacitive load and charge the inner wall of the MgO layer, and the charge of the inner wall remains as wall charge without attenuation due to a high resistivity of the MgO layer.
Next, a discharge-sustaining voltage is charged between the scan electrode and the sustain electrode. It is possible to discharge even at a voltage lower than the sparkover voltage where the wall charge is present. By the discharge, xenon gas in the discharge space is excited and UV ray of 147 nm is generated, and a display becomes luminous by exciting the phosphor by the UV ray.
A rear panel for PDP in which, to enhance brightness by enlarging the surface area of phosphor layer, a lattice-like barrier rib consisting of main barrier ribs and auxiliary barrier ribs is known (e.g., refer to JP-H10-321148 A).
Regarding formation of the above-mentioned lattice-like barrier rib, it is general to form a lattice-like barrier rib pattern by a method such as coating a glass paste containing a low-melting-point glass powder and an organic component on the substrate on which the address electrodes and the dielectric layer are provided and patterning by a sandblast or a photolithography method, or by carrying out pattern printing by the transfer molding method or a screen printing method, and then carrying out firing to remove the organic component to form a lattice-like barrier rib of which main component is the low-melting-point glass.
However, in the case where a lattice-like barrier rib is formed by firing the barrier rib pattern prepared with such a glass paste, there was a problem that, due to a shrinkage by the organic component being removed at the firing, among the main barrier ribs, intersection portions of the main barrier ribs and the auxiliary barrier ribs positioned' n the nondisplay areas of right and left of the display area, especially, at the outermost portion thereof becomes higher than the height of the main barrier ribs positioned in the display area. In such a case where the height of the intersections of the main barrier ribs and the auxiliary barrier ribs of the nondisplay area become higher than the barrier ribs of the display area, when the PDP is emitted by applying a voltage, a charge-through becomes easy to occur at an edge of the display area, and there was an erroneous discharge such as a turning off of a cell in the edge of the display area which should normally emit, or an emitting of a neighboring cell which normally should not emit.
It could therefore be helpful to provide a plasma display member which does not generate an erroneous discharge at the edge of the display area.